QR codes can also feature in much less conventional mediums, a few of which I will highlight.

© Nicolas1981, 2009, under a CC-BY-SA 3.0 licence

In Japan, most phones come with integrated QR code readers and, as such, QR codes are slightly more prominent than they are in the EU and US. When you read Wikipedia’s article on QR codes, one of the first things you see is a picture of a billboard that features a QR code. Whilst this is definitely an interesting concept, I don’t know if I’d feel comfortable pointing my phone at random objects in the middle of a large city at night!

Another interesting example is a QR code t-shirt. Dozens of these are available; in fact, there’s an online shop who primarily sell such shirts. My favourite is the shirt to the right, which has a QR code which decodes to ‘Don’t miss me’!

The Pet Shop Boys used QR codes on one of their single’s, Integral artwork. Cooler yet, the song’s video too featured QR codes which could be scanned and led to their website and a campaign against identity cards in Britain.

I’m a big fan of ‘design’ QR too. This is where the barcode is made to appear to contain a picture. For example, the below barcode leads to a page on the BBC’s website:

This QR code leads to a company who specialise in the creation of design QR codes:

That same company worked on these QR code chocolates!

Have you seen any cool applications of QR codes?

The QR Code Generator allows anyone to create QR Codes easily. QR Jumps (via Make Use Of) is the name of the website that is offering this functionality. Only registered users are allowed to create new QR Codes. Registration is done in a few seconds and no verification email is send. The site distinguishes between basic and advanced QR Code generation. The basic form contains fewer options. It is possible to use the basic QR Code form to create url, sms, phone number or text resources.

The user selects the content type at the top and enters the information below. Creating a QR Code for an url would mean to enter an url in the form. The generator will then create the QR Code image which can be created in various sizes and the two image formats jpg or png.

The QR Code above will open the Ghacks website in the associated web browser. The next contains a secret message that can only be revealed by scanning the image with your camera.

The advanced QR Code generator offers additional options like creating multiple links at once or setting an expiration date for the code.